“Sharing that experience with them was truly magical.” “A lot of people wanted to take selfies to commemorate the moment,” Otten says. Otten himself helped with data entry, inputting patients’ information as they were getting their jabs with health check-ins before people entered the building with directing patients to the right lines and with walk-in registrations. But so many employees signed up to help before the March 13 opening that they quickly expanded to helping in all other non-medical roles.
LUMEN FIELD VACCINATION SITE FREE
To free up the city to focus on the clinical side of the effort, Microsoft managed all volunteer and staff check-in needs at the site, a 325,000-square-foot event center at Lumen Field, the arena where the Seahawks play football and the Sounders play soccer just south of downtown Seattle. Volunteering at Lumen Field was the first opportunity we had to feel that sense of community and connection with our neighbor again, and it’s been a life-changing experience.” “Every person on the planet has been impacted by this pandemic in a profound way, and for the past year we’ve been isolated from each other in a way that’s unparalleled. “The only way we’re going to make it out of this pandemic is together, helping each other out,” says Otten, who works in human resources for Microsoft’s Cloud and AI business. Kevin Otten at the Lumen Field mass vaccination site in Seattle (Photo provided by Otten) Now, Microsoft is matching the hours its volunteers worked with a donation of more than $235,000 that will support community organizations around Washington state working to provide more equitable vaccine distribution. That made Seattle the most vaccinated major city in the country and prompted civic leaders to close the site earlier than planned, with the last shots given out June 12. About 1.5 million residents from King County, where the company is headquartered, have been vaccinated against COVID-19. So, it was a given that Otten would become one of more than 1,300 Microsoft employees who volunteered to help the city of Seattle run the largest civilian-led mass-vaccination site in the U.S.
The volunteer teachers, counselors and businesspeople who ran that group made such a profound impact on his life that for the past two decades he has tried to emulate them by volunteering himself.
When Kevin Otten came out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community in high school in the 1990s, a youth group he joined in his small town helped him find a sense of belonging and provided the support he needed to navigate a new and difficult situation.